USA Biology Olympiad effort led by Julia Khodor, Dina Gould Halme and Melissa Kosinski-Collins Last year, the Center for Excellence in Education asked MIT's President, Chuck Vest, to serve on a Blue Ribbon Committee to design a National Biology Olympiad. Presumably because of his HHMI Professorship, Chuck contacted Graham and asked if he would help with this effort. He replied that he would, and offered to involve the HHMI Education Group. As a result, we were invited to a meeting held in Boston to grade the several hundred exams from the second round of the first National Biology Olympiad. However, while grading, we all spoke up because we felt that there were fairly serious problems with the design of a number of the questions on the national exam. For example, there were significant ambiguities associated with some of the questions, and some questions awarded very substantial marks for rote memorization, even if the students failed to understand the concept being tested. Bill Stewart and his colleagues at the Center for Excellence in Education were impressed with the input from my Education Group members and asked if we would help design the questions for this year's National Biology Olympiad. Thus, the unanticipated consequence of this activity is that Graham is now a member of the Advisory Board for the National Biology Olympiad and his Education Group helped write the questions for this year's exam. In addition, the committee came to Cambridge again and Dina and Julia gave a presentation on how to write unambiguous questions using the Biology Concept Framework as a guide to writing questions that focus on understanding rather than memorization. In October of 2004, Melissa Kosinski-Collins joined the organizers of the the US Biology Olympiad at George Mason University in Washington D.C. to participate in a question writing session. Melanie, Melissa, and Julia helped edit the 2005 open exam. In June of 2005, Melissa Kosinski-Collins joined the Olympiad team in Washington D.C. to serve as an instructor for the two-week intensive National Finalist training camp. She taught sessions on cell biology, genetics and evolution, and animal anatomy and physiology. Melissa also was involved in writing the national finalist selection exam as well as mentoring the four member US team that travelled to China in July 2005. After the completion of the 2005 season, Melissa met with the organizers of the 2006 USABO, Terry Hufford, Margery Andersen, and Bill Stuart to discuss changes to the program. The group decided that the USABO should move to more concept-based exams and alter the organization of the 2006 National Finals to incorporate more thought-provoking discussion-based laboratory sessions. Many members of the Education Group participated in writing concept-based questions for the 2006 open and semi-final exams including Julia Khodor, Mandana Sassafar, Melanie Berkmen, and Kathy VanDiver. In June of 2006, Melissa and Julia flew to George Mason University to serve as full-time faculty for this year's national finals. Melissa led a laboratory on protein structure and purification and both Melissa and Julia helped write and administer the national exam. Melissa and Julia plan to continue their involvement with CEE and the Olympiad in the future. Center for Excellence in Education - USA Biology Olympiad